


Falling Apart

by TheAutumnLeaves



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dad Vader, Endor, Protective Darth Vader, Redemption, Return of the Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-18 02:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18111686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAutumnLeaves/pseuds/TheAutumnLeaves
Summary: Since Bespin, Vader has come to realize that his health will not hold out forever. After twenty years, his prosthetics are failing, and the botched surgeries aren't helping. Now, he's waiting for his son, and facing the fact that his only hope to survive is to use Luke as a shield, and pray that Luke wants him to survive.





	Falling Apart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MassiveHTTYDFan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MassiveHTTYDFan/gifts).



> This fanfic is dedicated to MassiveHTTYDFan, who left me a just GORGEOUS comment on Dazed. Take notes everyone, this is how you get free fanfic. Leave a nice comment, and then tell me what story you want to see! I thrive on validation, and giving it to me is the fastest way to get me to do anything you could possibly want.

He waited in trepidation at Endor, praying that his son would not appear. The Emperor had predicted it, as he had always anticipated Vader’s actions, but Luke was different. He was new, he was better than his father, and perhaps it would enable him to escape Palpatine’s prophesy.

He stood on a bridge, overlooking the dense forest, and watching uselessly for his son, for any flicker in the trees that might have betrayed the boy’s movement.

He prayed for Luke to stay away and hoped just as much that his son would appear, so that he could see him once more, before he finally failed Palpatine completely, and was left for dead. He could feel that day coming, waking was harder now, his movement was stiffer, his anger was becoming muted with its prevalence. He was wearing out, and he didn’t have long to live, anymore.

He grasped the railing and felt the old and worn mechanics of his hands grate. He had let them fall into disrepair, uninterested in performing maintenance that soon wouldn’t matter. The only hope that he would be allowed to live hinged on finding his son, not maintaining his failing body.

It was his last chance to prove any residual worth to the Emperor.

Only if his son turned, but maintained some hint of fondness for him would he be allowed to retire, and live as anything but a mechanism of war.

The boy had grown strong since Bespin, coming into his own as Vader had fallen further still from grace, both real, and the Emperor’s twisted version. He had injured his son, a terrible blow against what happiness had lingered from his discovery, but he had not killed him, which the Emperor had demanded. His master was angry, now. It was no longer cold, like it had been for the past two decades, now it burned, like the fires that had consumed him. He was not accommodating Vader’s failing condition, he could see the end coming as clearly as Vader did, and was trying to gain all utility possible in the meantime.

Vader wondered, morosely, if he had ever really believed anything kinder would result from his service. There had been a time he had felt invincible, never faltered on the battlefield, and felt fear only in relation to those he cared about. And there had come a day when he had severed those concerns, and then he had been truly unstoppable.

For years, he had been unstoppable.

For years, he had not considered that by the very fact of his living, he was failing, as all beings were.

He had resigned himself to the Emperor’s service, believing fully in his ability to follow orders, and keep Palpatine satisfied, at least, if not happy.

Somehow, Palpatine did not age. He did not grow weaker, as his warhorse did. As far as Vader could tell, he may as well not have changed since the day the Republic had fallen.

It was only Vader who aged.

He had not seen the traditional signs of aging, the wrinkles or aches that someone fully human might have felt, but rather, recognized the quality of his prosthetics falling, the mounts becoming more painful, everything steadily worsening, causing more and more agony, never giving him a moment’s rest.

The rush of battle was no longer enough to dull it.

His Force forsaken self-preservation was hardly enough to save him in war, there would come a day when he failed to move quickly enough, and he would be blasted to oblivion. When he would be just another casualty, lying still amongst the dead. When he would be disposed of, like so much unwanted garbage, loaded into the incinerator with the remains that could not be identified, because it was no secret that no one would come for his body –

He could feel his son approaching, now. The supernova of his presence was hidden by some sweetly insufficient shield, and it roiled quietly, obediently contained, but more powerful than Vader could conceive of.

He watched a transport make its heavy, constant way towards the shield generator, wondering if Luke was being kept in the cockpit, if he might have been watching his father in turn.

To another man, the man he might have been, if he had grown old with Padmé, his son’s growth would be a joyous marker of time spent. He could have watched his child grow up, from foolish teenager, who acted without thought, to the composed young man that he could sense now. His son was nothing if not a boy to be proud of, but Vader had denied himself that pride, remembering instead that everything his son was becoming was in spite of him, not because of any rearing of his own.

His son’s goodness was only a reminder of everything he had failed to be, and he was plotting to take it from him, to drag Luke down with him, so he could cling to his coattails, and maybe be granted a sliver of life of his own.

Padmé would have been ashamed, but she would have detested his every action for years now. His mother would have hated him too, for this. For threatening to drag the last of their family back into slavery, for his own ends. He hated himself, too.

He knew it was wrong. To ask Luke to give up his light, his happiness, his worth, but to retain some bond that Vader had not earned. He was making demands based on biology alone, assuming that Luke had made enough of his own life to be grateful to his father for having even given him the chance to do so.

His little boy –

He only wanted to see him.

He only wanted to tell him that he was loved.

But he wanted to be saved, for Luke to take the Emperor’s rage, and protect him, as he had failed to do for his child.

It was selfish. Like every choice he had made. It represented disdain for his son’s life, for his own role as a father, the fact that he should have been the protector.

He only wanted to see his son.

At Bespin, he had wanted more from Luke, he had wanted him to come with him, and be trained. He had not yet realized that he was falling apart, and no service the Emperor could offer would sustain him much longer. Then, he had had plans, grandiose and naïve, that would have seen him ruling the galaxy with his son at his side, young and beautiful and trustworthy, a leader he could take pride in –

He had no pride in anything, now.

The only thing that he had had a hand in building was this empire, which would not support him, was cancerous and rotten as the Republic had been before it. He had led the military, and though he had countless victories to his name, each one was just an aggregate of smaller failures, loses to his men, and citizens his actions had failed.

His son had grown up, from the sloppy, dangerous boy who had looked up to his sloppy, dangerous father, to a man more like his mother. More stable, more reasonable. Wiser. What there was to be proud of in him was the ways in which he had outgrown his father.

The troopers led his son from the lift, their hands on his arms, as if he was not bound, and surrounded.

He acknowledged them, accepted his son’s weapon, all the while aware only of his son’s gaze, the deep, placid blue of his eyes as he watched his father. His power was contained, held safely back from the galaxy, not flaunted as Anakin’s had been. He was dressed all in black, his clean, simple suit serving the simple purpose of making him seem all the more mature. He was no longer the child who had lashed out against Vader, throwing his untrained self at the practiced warlord in fury, desperate to avenge the father he had never known.

Vader wondered, sadly, if that love was gone. If now there was only failure, not even the glimmer of affection needed to make his actions useful, even to himself. Would Luke even want to keep him, if he turned? Would his son have mercy on him, and let him live, let him need his child?

“And so, you have come to me,” he spoke at last, when only Luke remained. He needed his child, needed to be promised that he was wanted in return, now that he was worthless for anything but sentimental value.

“And you to me,” Luke answered, calmly.

He was dignified; less than a Padawan, yet more gently confident than a Master. Padmé shone behind his eyes, in his actions and even, in some strange way, echoing in his presence.

“The Emperor has been expecting you,” Vader warned. He had no right to doom this child, this beautiful reminder of the one true good that had ever graced his life. He should have told Luke to run, to escape his father’s presence, and the Empire’s grasp, and run to Wild Space, where he could find himself freedom and safety in the uncharted worlds.

But he couldn’t bear to say it, to send away the only person who could save him, after all he had done.

“I know, Father,” Luke said.

Vader did not know if he imagined the hint of challenge in the words, the flicker of Anakin’s fire in the boy’s eyes.

“So, you have accepted the truth.”

His son knew him as Father, and he wanted his galaxy to end here, for this to be all he knew for eternity, just his son’s gaze, and quiet accusation. His son had acknowledged their bond, and though Vader could not feel his son reaching for him, the boy did not pull away, either.

“I have accepted the truth that you were once Anakin Skywalker, my father.”

“That name no longer holds any meaning for me,” Vader said. He was daring Luke to pursue him, praying to get a rise out of him, for his boy to insist that he was still his father, regardless of the name he went by.

“It is the name of your true self, you’ve only forgotten!” Luke said. The rise in his voice was what Vader had sought, but all at once, it was not. Luke was not angry with him, he did not insist that he was still his father, that he still owed him protection.

For a long, long moment, a heartbeat, a nanosecond, perhaps less, he met his son’s eyes. His son, but not his son, a boy who was Anakin’s, who refused to see the truth that Vader knew, that his father was dead, and could not return.

“There is still good in you, the Emperor hasn’t driven it from you fully.”

Luke sounded so like his mother. Like her, he believed so fully in what he was saying, in the idea that Vader was not the endpoint that Anakin would always come to.

And, like her, he showed him his weaknesses, turning his back on the Sith to look out into the jungle, as Vader had moments before.

“That’s why you couldn’t destroy me. That’s why you won’t take me to your emperor now.”

He was so calm, but Vader could sense a slight tremor in his voice, the uncertainty that a man who had maimed him might not truly want him destroyed.

It was a reasonable fear.

Vader looked down at the lightsaber the trooper had passed him.

He could have destroyed Luke, here and now, if he had wanted to. He was weak, and he was failing, but he was not yet so far gone that he could not kill an unarmed prisoner.

He activated the lightsaber, and saw Luke stiffen, almost imperceptibly.

So, Luke knew that too.

“I see you have constructed a new lightsaber,” he said, admiring the brilliant green blade. It was entirely unlike the one Luke had inherited from him, but that was just as well. His son was leaving every trapping of his worthless father behind, and soon, there wouldn’t be a trace of the parent who had never benefited him.

Vader realized, silently, that he no longer wanted Luke to save him.

“Your skills are complete,” he praised softly.

He didn’t want Luke to save him. He didn’t want the boy to take the Emperor’s cruelty, didn’t want to see him reduced to nothing more than a human shield. He wanted to praise his son, to tell him how loved and beautiful he was, that he was the one good thing that remained in the galaxy, and then to set him free again, and die alone, so Luke could not be harmed further.

“Indeed, you are powerful, as the Emperor has foreseen.”

It was a warning, now. He had seen his son, and been able to burn his gentle face into his memory, as he had memorized Padmé’s so long ago. He had taken more from Luke than he deserved even by learning that image, and now, he had to let Luke go, to be free. He half wanted to ask Luke to take the lightsaber back, to end his suffering here, before returning to his life, but to ask that of his innocent child would be unspeakable cruelty –

“Come with me.”

Luke’s eyes were fixed on him, wide, but focused, certain of his request. This was a moment Luke had planned, when he looked at Vader, and asked him to leave behind everything that he had become.

“Why?” Vader asked, holding the lightsaber out to Luke, the cuffs falling from his wrists with a gesture. “You have your freedom, you do not need me. The Emperor has little use for me, now.”

He would be dead soon, and his son would be safe. Perhaps this failure would be enough to finally motivate his master to kill him.

“I don’t have to _need_ you,” Luke said. He had accepted his lightsaber, grasping it tightly, like a lifeline his father couldn’t truly give. “I… I know I don’t need you. That’s not why I came.”

“I cannot help you defeat my master,” Vader said, resisting the urge to reach out and touch his son. He had seen him, that was enough, it had to be, because it was already too much to ask. “I am sorry.”

“That’s all right,” Luke murmured, his voice dropping as he clipped his weapon to his belt and took a small step nearer. “We have a plan, I’m not worried about defeating him.”

“He is aware of your fleet,” Vader said quickly, unable to accept what his son was saying. “You are falling into his snare. There are troops waiting to intercept your friends, and the entire Imperial fleet is within range -.”

At last, Luke seemed shaken.

“Then, we have to do something!”

“There is no we!” Vader insisted. “I am next to useless now, I _cannot save them_.”

“But, Leia,” Luke began, his voice breaking on his friend’s name, before he clarified quickly, “My _sister_ , she’s with them! You can’t let her die!”

“Your sister?” Vader asked, choked. Had Padmé survived after all? Was the girl he had tortured at the Death Star _(oh Force she had looked so like her)_ the result of a second union?

“My twin!” Luke cried desperately, “Please, _please_ , you have to help me, I can’t get back to her in time to make a new plan!”

“Hush, Luke,” Vader said. The vocoder rendered his voice firm, and he reached out to grasp his son’s shoulders, steadying his shaking. “We can do nothing, if you are heard.”

Luke swallowed unevenly, and nodded, his hands coming up to grasp Vader’s wrists as he tried to get his breathing under control.

“How many troops?” Luke asked.

“I don’t know specifics,” Vader admitted, glad that Luke was calming down somewhat. “This is the Emperor’s battle, not mine. Was the Lambda shuttle the only that you were able to land?”

“Yes,” Luke said anxiously, nodding. “We’ve only got about thirty humans down here, but the ewoks have agreed to help us.”

Vader nodded, recalling the reports of the small, furry native species. They seemed fairly harmless, but in large numbers, and motivated by whatever Luke’s friends had told them, they still had the potential to be dangerous.

“I can destroy the shield generator,” he offered. Dying here, for his son’s cause was probably better than living a drawn-out death under the Emperor’s thumb. “You need only assure your friends that it will be done.”

“I’m coming with you,” Luke answered, without hesitation. “They won’t take you at your word, so I may as well be there to verify.”

“It will not be safe,” Vader reminded him. He could accept his own death at the hands of these men, but not his son’s, especially not when Luke had a sister to return to.

Luke gave him a slight smile, another flicker of Anakin’s bravado. “It’s war, Father. None of what I do is safe.”

“If you are -,” Vader began, but Luke cut him off.

“And I can sense what you’re planning. I won’t let you die.”

Vader turned, releasing one of Luke’s shoulders, but drawing him along by the other as he headed for the opposite lift. “I am already dying, child. Even if I do survive your operation, I do not have long to live.”

“I don’t want you committing suicide, Father,” Luke asked gently, and Vader looked back down at him. “Can you promise me you’ll try to survive?”

He hesitated for a moment. It would have been easy, to try to save his children, and let himself die in punishment for what he had already done to them. It would have felt right, the ending he deserved. But Luke wanted him to live, and perhaps a drawn-out death was what he deserved after all. “Provided that you agree to leave me, if we should be overrun.”

“I promise,” Luke agreed quietly, and Vader was surprised to feel the boy lean into his side, and exhale softly. “Thank you.”

Flustered, he held Luke for a brief moment, before peeling him back off, and setting off into the generator with renewed vigor, eager not to have to face his son’s affection until the battle was over. “It is the least that I can do.”

Luke ran after him, and Vader refused to let the boy catch up, refused to let their movement be heard, silencing his respirator to the greatest degree the antiquated systems would allow. They could not be detected, he could not lose his son, he could not allow his daughter to enter this fight woefully unprepared.

When they reached the control room, Vader ordered the attendants out, and while Luke searched for explosives, he was already slashing fuel lines and power cords, rendering the whole place set to explode. Then, he prepared his lightsaber to overheat, and grabbed a very surprised Luke, hauling him from the building.

“What about -,” Luke asked, racing alongside his father.

Vader didn’t have time to respond, before he felt the explosion start to ripple through the building, and he dove into a canyon, pulling Luke close against his chest, and shielding the child with his body.

From his arms, his son’s voice emanated, muffled by Vader’s mass. “Oh.”

For what felt like an eternity, he remained huddled over his son, feeling debris rain down around them. This was it, this was where it all ended. Everything he had been, everything he had done, he had thrown away at the drop of a hat, turning the galaxy upside down again.

“Father?”

Vader tilted his head down towards his child, cradling him ever closer.

“I think it’s over,” Luke murmured, pushing gently against Vader’s chest. “We have to go stop Leia from coming this way.”

“Yes,” Vader agreed, hesitantly releasing his son. He had to protect her, too, the daughter he had abused so cruelly, the girl he had forced to watch as her homeworld was destroyed.

“She’s not as willing to forgive you as I am,” Luke admitted quietly, sitting back against the embankment for a moment, holding his father’s gaze. “She wanted me to leave you to the emperor.”

“Then she is the wiser of the two of you,” Vader answered, squeezing his son’s shoulder, before pulling him to his feet.

Luke smiled at him. “I think she’s gonna appreciate that you said that.”

The princess was not impressed to see him. She was doubtful that he had done as he’d said, and nearly insisted on going to the shield generator to check for herself, before the fleets met overhead, and she turned instead to commanding from the ground. Vader gave what intel he could, in regard to the tactics of his commanders, before retreating to be with Luke.

His son was anxious, fidgeting with the sleeves of his suit, and staring up at the sky as day turned to night, and the battle wore on. He could sense that the boy wanted to be up there, fighting as well, but Luke did not make any attempt to commandeer the troop transport that the rebels had used, and leaned into his father for comfort.

Silently, they watched, the sounds of Leia giving directions emanating from the single hut that remained lit, long after the ewoks had taken their leave. Vader, too, found it strange to watch, but not interact, but his son was in his arms, silent and safe, and when the battle was over at last, and the Death Star had disappeared in a flash that had made the night as bright as day for one terrible moment, the princess appeared, and cautiously seated herself next to Luke.

“You brought him back,” she said, as if Vader were not present.

“He destroyed the shield generator,” Luke answered, sitting up, out of his father’s embrace, but squeezing his hand.

Leia looked at Vader for a long moment, her eyes hard and calculating, though not without their humanity.

“He said that he’s dying, Leia.”

“I have been growing weaker,” Vader explained quietly, cautiously reaching out, asking his son to lean against him once more. “I suspect that I do not have long to live.”

Leia looked at him strangely, and he couldn’t help smiling.

“Did you believe I would not acknowledge my own weakness?” he asked, gratefully accepting Luke’s weight as the boy leaned back against him. “I was mortally wounded when you had not even been born; I’ve been a dead man ever since.”

“You haven’t fought like a dead man,” Leia said, and Vader accepted the accusation in her tone.

“My life support is failing me,” he explained. “The surgeries I underwent two decades ago have not fully healed, even now, and I doubt that I will see the end of the year.”

He wished he could have said it more delicately. He could feel his son’s response, the way his spine straightened, and he let less of his weight rest against his father. But a gentle way to explain it did not exist, his life had been cruel, and his death was fast approaching. There were no nice words to make it easier, to even try would have been dishonesty.

He was surprised when it was Leia who attempted to soften the blow.

“What do you mean, your surgeries haven’t healed?”

He shook his head slightly, wishing to reach out and steady her, as he had done with Luke. “Incisions have not fully closed, inflammation has never faded. It is a fact of the severity of my injuries.”

“It is _not_ ,” she answered, and the force she put behind the words surprised him. What did she care if he died of his injuries? She didn’t trust him, and she had no reason to. Now that the emperor was dead, he offered nothing more than a political nightmare. “I’ve never heard of an injury that couldn’t be stabilized but wasn’t fatal in a matter of hours.”

“I have accepted it, I deserve nothing better,” Vader said, trying to soothe her, without sounding condescending to a woman who was disinterested in being his child.

She shot him an angry look. “Luke _loves_ you,” she said. “You’re going to put all your effort into surviving, or you’ll be failing him even more than you already have.”

At that, Vader laughed hoarsely, the sound translated to a strange crackling by the vocoder. “In that case, I suppose I have no say in the matter.”

She gave him a somewhat wolfish grin, and he couldn’t help returning it, loving being looked at with such open aggression by his own child, who was trusting that he would not hurt her.

“That’s right, you don’t.”

For a brief time longer, she sat next to them, as they all watched the fleets withdraw from one another, and several small rebel fighters descended to the forest floor. Then, the smuggler who had accompanied the princess at Bespin appeared, and she got up, following him down to meet with their friends, joyfully greeting the baron of Cloud City as he stood under the smuggler’s battered YT-1300.

Before the sun could rise, the rebels had begun a party, and Luke briefly went to join in, happily greeting his friends, assuring himself of their safety, before he returned to Vader, where he sat on the bridge.

“Do you really think we can help you?” he asked, settling against his father again.

“I don’t know, child,” Vader admitted. “Leia seems confident, but I find it difficult to believe.”

“How often were you being treated?” Luke asked, hesitating before continuing more quietly, “And how were you injured?”

“I was severely burned in a battle,” Vader answered, skating over the details, not wishing to consider the day he had fallen into darkness, now that his son was safely in his arms, and he was starting to feel lighter at last. “I’ve been receiving bacta treatment every few months.”

Luke nodded slightly, relaxing safely into his arms. “I don’t know that much about medical procedures,” he admitted softly. “But if Leia thinks there’s something we can do, then I’m hopeful.”

Finally, Vader coaxed his son to his feet, and Luke allowed himself to be bribed into going to bed, with the promise that Vader would stay by his side until he awoke. He fell asleep as the sun rose, and Vader sat at his side in the empty shuttle, going over his diagnostics, and considering his daughter’s promise of medical care.


End file.
